Cyrille Regis

Just occasionally players come along who transcend club loyalties and football fans simply like them. Our Matt was of course such a player. Cyrille Regis was also one. Cyrille terrified me as a Saints fan whoever he was playing for when I saw him. But my favourite accolade today came from Big Ron who described him as a "better bloke than he was a player". A friend of mine worked with disaffected kids in the Midlands when Cyrille was in his pomp. She rang and asked if he could turn up and say a few words to the kids at her drop in centre. He didn't turn up, say hello and piss off. He came and stayed. And he turned up whenever he could. The term "role model" is over-used, but for many young black kids in the Midlands he was just that.

So sad news, and I apologise if someone has put this on another thread, but I felt the guy deserved one of his own.

 

Well said Lambo.

 

I am a bit too young to really remember Regis in his prime but I do remember having Regis in my Wycombe Wanderers squad in the old Championship Manager and he was awesome.

I remember my dad telling me I had a gem of a player there, and he was right. I gained promotion in my first season mostly thanks to his goals!

Great player who did so much for black players and black people in general. So young as well. RIP Cyrille, taken too young!

 

Fantastic player and so sad....what we would give for him at his pomp now!

 

Like a Lukaku, but with skill....

 

Posted this in the general thread, but I'll say it again - this is well worth a watch.

 

I can well recall Big Ron's WBA visiting The Dell in their yellow and green stripes and tonking Saints 3-0. I was about 13 at the time and was in a state of shock as it was the first time I ever saw Southampton torn about by the visitors. Cunningham and Regis were superb that day. Sad to realise that both players died too young.

A lot has been written about the influence of Cunningham and Regis on black footballers and supporters but I think they also had a huge impact on firing the imagination of my contemporaries as well. I was perhaps too young to notice the shocking racism they faced at that time but as an avid reader of "Shoot", Cunningham, Batson and Regis they were players I both respected and feared whenever we came up against them.

RIP - Cyril

 

I think he was a role model for anyone anywhere. Thoroughly decent bloke. I also liked the fact he cane via non-League... Harlow Town or Hendon Town, I think.

 

Absolutely Ian. I always had a soft spot for WBA back then because of him, Batson and Laurie Cunningham.

 

Always had a soft spot for that West Brom side. At the time I wouldn’t have even realised it had anything to do with race. Now, I don’t know. But always liked Cyril. RIP.

 

I'll go with that. He oozed dignity.

 

Tribute from Jason roberts, his nephew.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42690428

Oh and he started at Hayes, not Hendon or Harlow.

 

I still remember the song that was sung all them years ago....".Nice one Cyril, Nice one son, Nice one Cyril, lets have another one!" RIP

 

That was Cyril Knowles, the Tottenham player...

 

This is how big an impact Regis had, he made the cover of NME

 

Just looked it up, he was only 47 when he died of cancer in 1991.

 

Oh jeez, I never knew that.

 

The odd thing about the WBA team with Cyril Regis / Lawrie Cunningham etc in was that they were the only team I ever got anywhere near completing in my Panini sticker collection. As a consequence, the names of the players that Ron Atkinson assembled are probably more familiar to me than any other club apart from Saints and perhaps Liverpool around that time. That season they were devastating and it was a shock for me to see that turn Southampton over so comprehensively. I think it was when we still had Phil Bowyer up front but I might be mistaken.

The one thing that I miss about football from when I was a kid was is that there was not the wall-to-wall TV coverage and therefore it always felt that it was genuinely something to have seen a player who had either appeared in Shoot or in those sticker books. I suppose because we had Danny Wallace, it never struck as being strange for clubs to field Black players and I never appreciated at the time just how much the coverage in magazines like Shoot just to make this normal. At one point Viv Anderson was a regular columnist. I don't think it ever struck me that Regis, Batson and Cunningham were any different from anyone else other than the fact that they had the potential to destroy Saints.

It is amazing to think that WBA are now synonymous with dull , defensive football whereas the team under the stewardship of Atkinson had the reputation as one of the most entertaining sides of those times.

 

I loved Shoot!

 

Of course I only bought it for my son.